Wayne County commission needs to make 'fail jail' solution work

Nov. 22, 2013

Dan Gilbert has offered to pay $50 million for the jail site, with the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice, the Wayne County jail and the Wayne County Juvenile Detention Facility. / Kathleen Galligan/Detroit Free Press

Written by

The Detroit Free Press Editorial Board

Dan Gilbert wants to buy Wayne County’s failed jail site. And Wayne County — or most of it, at any rate — would like to sell it to him.

So what’s the problem? The devil, as always, is in the details.

Gilbert has offered to pay $50 million for the jail site, on Gratiot at I-375, along with the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice, the Wayne County jail and the Wayne County Juvenile Detention Facility at St. Antoine and Macomb.

The county would relocate its jail to the Mound Road Correctional Facility; it would also build a new courthouse. The downtown sites comprise about 15.5 acres, and would form the heart of what Gilbert envisions as a new entertainment district.

This solves a problem for Gilbert, who has been accumulating property, businesses and employees in downtown Detroit at a record rate, and surely would prefer his growing real estate and entertainment holdings not overlook a jail complex.

It solves a problem for the county, stuck with a scrubbed jail project that’s already cost $160 million.

And it solves a problem for Detroit, where development in downtown and Midtown has taken off. A jail on the edge of downtown might as well be a doorstop, effectively halting growth and development along the Gratiot corridor.

Yet this week, Wayne County Commissioners trashed a document that would have been the first step toward a deal.

The commission opted not to vote on the memorandum of understanding to give Gilbert 180 days to perform due diligence on the properties involved in the transaction, but required the county to pay a $500,000 break-up fee if it dropped out of the deal.

It’s a lot of money, no doubt. And the commission has an obligation to make sure it doesn’t flush more taxpayer money down a sewer.

But Gilbert also has a point here. HIs due diligence could cost exceed a million dollars.

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And he’s stepping up with a solution to a huge problem for the county and the city. Not out of altruism — the entertainment district clearly helps gird his interests. But there are also tremendous upsides for the city and county.

Most places, you’d call that a win-win. Around here, as some commissioners hinted at this week’s meeting, it becomes a question of how much “help” a rich guy is entitled to get.

Commissioners say the payment, which would be on the taxpayers’ dime, is too generous, and that the county has to be wary of committing to a deal before it’s sure that it can relocate its jail and court operations to the Mound Road facility. If the county couldn’t move those operations, it would have to back out of the deal, which would mean losing a half-million dollars.

So why is that Dan Gilbert’s problem? He’s not being unreasonable, seeking some assurance that the county doesn’t back out.

Some terms of the agreement may need altering, but commissioners need to keep focus on the bigger picture: the need to salvage something positive out of the disastrous mismanagement of the jail project, for which they also hold some responsibility.

The county is awaiting a revised memorandum of understanding, which it could consider next week, and vote on as soon as Dec. 5. And despite strident opposition from some commissioners, it’s likely the votes to approve the right deal are there.

Everyone wants this deal to happen. Finding terms agreeable to all should be eminently doable. So let’s get it done.